Tuesday, April 17, 2007

On 17 April 2007 it was revealed that college gunman Cho Seung-Hui penned a "disturbing note" before going on a shooting spree which left 32 people dead, police have revealed. The 23-year-old South Korean student killed his first victim, 18-year-old Emily Hilscher, before he went on the rampage and blasted to death whoever was in range. It is not yet clear as to why Seung-Hui, described as a loner, killed Emily and then went on to slaughter dozens more people with two handguns. Police sources said a "disturbing note" left in his room contained a bomb threat and that he probably went back there to re-arm during his deadly spree. The note is reported to have contained the line "You made me do this". Reports say the English undergraduate's creative writing was so "troubled" that Seung-Hui had been referred by teachers to the school's counselling service. Theories under investigation include: • The killer and Emily Hilscher were an item and it was an argument between them over another student which sparked the slaughter • Seung-Hui was obsessed with Hilscher and wanted to be with her but she had refused his advances leading him to go on the rampage • The bitter gunman despised rich students and went on the rampage to kill those with money

Some reports have suggested that Seung-Hui suspected Hilscher of cheating on him with Ryan Clark. Seung-Hui murdered them both, Clark dying with a bullet wound in the neck, according to U.S. media. Seung-Hui whereabouts are unaccounted for from that moment until roughly two hours later, when massacre began. By the time night fell in Virginia 33 people were dead, including the gunman. The 23-year-old's body was discovered among those of his victims in a classroom in Norris Hall, where all the dead save Clark and Hilscher were found. Police have recovered a 9mm handgun and a .22 calibre handgun. Ballistics tests have confirmed one of the two weapons seized was used in both shootings. The names of 32 victims will be released once identifications on the bodies are complete. A preliminary list has been released by the Associated Press, a link to which can be found above. Steve Flaherty of Virginia State police said: "We cannot say at this stage that the same shooter was involved in both instances. We are now exploring that evidence and trying to make that trail. It's certainly reasonable for us to assume this but we don't have the evidence." Victims were found in at least four classrooms as well as a stairwell, he said. The college has faced fierce critcism from grieving students who demanded to why the campus was not locked down and how Seung-Hui was able to massacre 30 people two hours after the first murders. However Virginia Secretary of Public Safety John Marshall stated in a press conference: "(The college)made the right decisions based on the information they had available at the time." Other reports clamed that the gunman who carried out the US campus massacre shot his victims three times. "There were leg, arm, head, face (injuries), the more critical ones actually had head or facial shots," an emergency room doctor said. Dr Joseph Cacioppo, who treated the wounded, added: "There were chest shots, leg shots, arm shots. He was just shooting to kill." All the wounded still in hospital are now in stable condition, a hospital spokesman has said. All those 12 wounded have three or more bullet wounds. Seung-Hui was a student at the university. He had residency status in the U.S. and was residing on campus in Harper Residence Hall. He majored in English. He was a South Korean citizen who has lived in the United States since 1992, said U.S. immigration spokesman Chris Bentley. He and his family lived in Centreville, Virginia. South Korea's president reiterated his condolences over the U.S. university shooting after the revelation that the suspect was of South Korean origin. Hilscher and Clark were neighbours on the fourth floor of the West Ambler Johnston Hall dormitory. On her own personal Myspace web page Emily Hilscher went under the pseudonym Pixie.

On her personal profile, which has not been updated since October 2006, she talks about meeting a new boy. She wrote: "I am the pixie. my friends are what keep me smiling. i unfortunatly am alone... all alone.. i live love and get booted but eventually that will change. have a wonderful guy who is hopefully going to change all of that... but dont know what is going to happen." It is unclear what boy she was meant, and it was obvious that she did not update her MySpace page often. Emily and Ryan Clark were shot at 7.15am. U.S. media reported that Clark had been shot in the neck.

The parents of Ryan Clark, who is from the town of Martinez in Georgia, were told their son had died in a telephone call from the coroner in the town of compiling the list of dead from the massacre. Stan and Letitie Clark were being comforted by friends and family last night at their home as the investigation into the massacre continued. Ryan Clark, who has a twin brother, was an officer in the college's army reserve unit. Pals of the Emily and Ryan posted messages of tribute on Internet social-networking site 'Facebook' and other blogs remembering Hilscher her as a vibrant girl with an engaging personality. "Emily was a kind and wonderful person who always put a smile on my face," wrote pal Jessica Gould. Ryan Clark - a prefect in the dormitory - was in his fifth year at Virginia Tech and a leader in the school's marching band. "He was such a friendly person," said friend Sarah Davis, 21, a trombone player in the band. "When I came in as a freshman, I was scared to death. He was always really friendly. If he didn't know you, he'd introduce himself. "He was like, 'I want to know everybody." Columbia County Sheriff's Office in Georgia confirmed that 22-year-old Ryan Clark from Martinez, Georgia, was one of the first shooting victims. Hilscher, from Rappahannock County, Virginia, was confirmed dead by Rappahannock Country administrator John McCarthy, a friend of the Hilscher family. "You hear about people in other places mourning the loss of a child of great potential and great hope, and now we're the ones that have to bear that great loss," McCarthy said last night. "It's a great loss to the county, and a terrible, terrible tragedy to the family," McCarthy said. "The Hilschers are strong people, and this is a strong community, and they'll have our support. And the best we can hope for is a time of healing." Police are still investigating the motive behind the attacks and detectives have not ruled out the possibility that there was a second shooter or an accomplice to the gunman. Two hours after the slayings of Clark and Hilscher in the West Ambler Johnston Hall building at least 31 more victims - including the gunman - were shot dead in the University's Norris Hall building. Virginia Tech officials are expected to release a list of those killed and wounded later today. By Monday afternoon information about those who had been killed had already began to filter out. The list of the dead is known to include at least four staff members working inside the Norris Hill building. A message on the front page of the school's engineering department website paid tribute to two of the staff. It read: "In Memoriam. Professor Kevin Granata and Professor Liviu Librescu who died on April 16, 2007 wwhile serving Virginia Tech." Prof Kevin Granata was killed while holding his course in the Norris Hall building. Professor Liviu Librescu, originally from Romania, was killed alongside Granata. A third instructor in the engineering department, Professor GV Loganathan, was also killed in the massacre. Loganathan was teaching in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering when the gunman went on rampage. His colleague Prof Raman Kumar confirmed the news of Loganathan's death. A language teacher, German instructor Jamie Bishop, 35, was also confirmed dead. He had been leading a class when a gunman burst through the doors and shot him in the head, according to witnesses. "I don't think he was the type of person who had an enemy," said Troy Paddock, a close friend of Bishop. "He was a very friendly person. He did weekly gatherings for students out of class to practice German where they could talk about anything. He was a nice and helpful person." Bishop's wife, Dr. Stefanie Hofer, is another instructor in the school's German department. All victims in hospital now are in stable condition.

Thursday, April 5, 2007

Family courts have become courts of the absurd and they are extorting fathers. Child support enforcement is federally mandated. State Family Courts are using it to destroy families. It is a conspiracy of judges, lawyers, and court administrators fleecing the average citizens.Massive numbers of fathers who are accused of no wrongdoing now are separated from their children, plundered for everything they have, publicly vilified and incarcerated without trial. . . About 24 million American children live in homes where the father is not present, with devastating consequences for both the children and society. Crime, drug and alcohol abuse, truancy, teenage pregnancy, suicide and psychological disorders are a few of the tragic consequences. Conventional wisdom assumes that the fathers of these children have abandoned them. In this case the conventional wisdom is dangerously wrong. It is far more likely that an "absent" father is forced away rather than leaving voluntarily. . . In his new study, Divorced Dads: Shattering the Myths, Sanford Braver of Arizona State University has shown conclusively that the so-called "deadbeat dad," one who deserts his children and evades child support, "does not exist in significant numbers." Braver confirms that, contrary to popular belief, at least two-thirds of divorces are filed by mothers, who have virtual certainty of getting the children and a huge portion of the fathers' income, regardless of any fault on their part. The title of Ashton Applewhite's 1997 book says it succinctly: Cutting Loose: Why Women Who End Their Marriages Do So Well. . . Other studies have found even higher percentages of divorces filed by mothers, and lawyers report that, when children are involved, divorce is the initiative of the mother in virtually all instances. Moreover, few of these divorces involve grounds such as desertion, adultery or violence. The most frequent reasons given are "growing apart" or "not feeling loved or appreciated." (Surveys consistently show that fathers are much more likely than mothers to believe parents should remain married.) Yet, as Braver reports, despite this involuntary loss of their children, 90 percent of these deserted fathers regularly pay court-ordered child support (unemployment being the main reason for nonpayment), often at exorbitant levels and many without any rights to see their children. Most make heroic efforts to stay in contact with the children from whom they are forcibly separated. ...The voices of fathers rarely are heard in the public arena. Instead we hear the imprecations of a government conducting what may be the most massive witch-hunt in this country's history. Never before have we seen the spectacle of the highest officials in the land -- including the president, the attorney general and other Cabinet secretaries, and leading members of Congress from both parties -- using their offices as platforms from which publicly to vilify private citizens who have been convicted of nothing and who have no opportunity to reply. . . Under the guise of pursuing deadbeat dads, we now are seeing mass incarcerations without trial, without charge and without counsel, while the media and civil libertarians look the other way. We also have government officials freely entering the homes and raiding the bank accounts of citizens who are accused of nothing and simply helping themselves to whatever they want -- including their children, their life savings and their private papers and effects, all with hardly a word of protest noted. . . And these are fathers who are accused of nothing. Those who face trumped-up accusations of child abuse also must prove their innocence before they can hope to see their children. Yet now it is well established that most child abuse takes place in the homes of single mothers. A recent study from the Department of Health and Human Services, or HHS, found that "almost two-thirds [of child abusers] were females." Given that male perpetrators are not necessarily fathers but much more likely to be boyfriends and stepfathers, fathers emerge as the least likely child abusers. A British study by Robert Whelan in 1993 titled Broken Homes and Battered Children concluded that a child living with a single mother is up to 33 times more likely to be abused than a child living in an intact family. The argument of many men legally separated from their families is that the real abusers have thrown the father out of the family so they can abuse his children with impunity. ...In Virginia alone the state Division of Child Support Enforcement now is "pursuing" 428,000 parents for up to $1.6 billion, according to its director, Nick Young. In a state of fewer than 7 million people, the parents of 552,000 children are being "pursued." That is the parents of roughly half the state's minor dependent children. HHS claims that almost 20 million fathers in the nation are being pursued for something close to $50 billion. We are being asked to believe that half the fathers in America have abandoned their children willfully. . . . . These figures essentially are meaningless. If they indicate anything it is the scale on which families are being taken over by a destructive and dangerous machine consisting of judges, lawyers, psychotherapists, social workers, bureaucrats and women's groups -- all of whom have a direct financial interest in separating as many children from their fathers as possible, vilifying and plundering the fathers and turning them into criminals. The machine is so riddled with conflicts of interest that it is little less than a system of organized crime. Here is how it works: Judges are appointed and promoted by the lawyers and "custody evaluators," into whose pockets they funnel fees; the judges also are influenced with payments of federal funds from child-support enforcement bureaucracies that depend on a constant supply of ejected fathers; child-support guidelines are written by the bureaucracies that enforce them and by private collection companies that have a financial stake in creating as many arrearages and "deadbeat dads" as possible. These guidelines are then enacted by legislators, some of whom divert the enforcement contracts to their own firms, sometimes even taking personal kickbacks (as charged in a recent federal indictment in Arkansas). Legislators who control judicial appointments also get contracts (and kickbacks, again the case in Arkansas) for providing legal services at government expense in the courts of their appointees. And, of course, custody decisions and child-support awards must be generous enough to entice more mothers to take the children and run, thus bringing a fresh supply of fathers into the system. In short, child support is the financial fuel of the divorce industry. It has very little to do with the needs of children and everything to do with the power and profit of large numbers of adults. ...There is no evidence that endless "crackdowns" on evicted fathers serve any purpose other than enriching those in the cracking-down business. With child- support enforcement now a $3 billion national industry, the pursuit of the elusive deadbeat yields substantial profits, mostly at public expense. "In Florida last year," writes Kathleen Parker in the Orlando Sentinel, "taxpayers paid $4.5 million for the state to collect $162,000 from fathers"; and the story is the same elsewhere. . . . . Instead of the easy fiction that massive numbers of fathers are suddenly and inexplicably abandoning their children, perhaps what we should believe instead is that a lucrative racket now is cynically using our children as weapons and tools to enrich lawyers and provide employment for judges and bureaucrats. Rather than pursuing ever greater numbers of fathers with ever more Draconian punishments, the Justice Department should be investigating the kind of crimes it was created to pursue -- such as kidnapping, extortion and racketeering -- in the nation's family courts.

...Truth was the first casualty of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s Welfare Reform. The Best Interests of the child was the second.The Best Interests of the Family was the third.This is the legacy of Welfare Reform. God only knows what perils we avoided by passing up Hillary’s Health Care Reform package.Military salaries and federal workers’ salaries come from outside of the state and bring in big money to the state family courts. Stay out of Family Court. You cannot win. Keep your children out of public schools, and never call the police for a domestic problem. Public schools teach children to call 911 for all kinds of things. They teach them to call the police on their parents if they think they are being physically or mentally abused. Police must respond to every 911 call, even from a child’s cell phone. And they must believe the child even when they know the child is not telling the truth. The same goes for a female spouse, if she calls the police. The police must arrest someone. It is usually the man. Once you get to Family Court your financial future is in jeopardy...Your salary is the target. The truth is irrelevant. They do not care about the truth. They will make up their own facts to fit the situation. Lawyers distort and even fabricate. Judges are indifferent to both Petitioner and the Respondent.All they want to know is who makes the most money. The name of the game is “Get the Money”. There is no justice in Family Court....They do not care what is in the best interests of the child. Truth is irrelevant.Fathers and mothers are the greatest experts when it comes to the best interest of the child. The office of child support enforcement, the courts, the district attorney and many experts on children don't have a clue what children really need. Children need time and attention from their parents, not more draconian methods to collect more money.

...Family Courts are worse than organized crime. They are an organized crime, and they are the so-called administrators of the law. So, it is legal, but, it is unconscionable....Are you concerned about father's rights? Fathers are routinely discriminated against in family court, the district attorney, and the office of child support enforcement. Parenting includes much more than writing a check once a month. The best interest of the child is served most effectively by shared parenting. Courts all across the nation continue to ignore the importance of fathers in family court. The District Attorney looks upon fathers as mere pay checks.

...I was made aware of this article by ANCPR, Alliance for Non-Custodial Parents Rights. I urge you to contact them in order to receive an information packet that further substantiates the destructive effect of the draconian child support enforcement laws that have been enacted in recent years. Their address is: ANCPR http://ancpr.org

Wednesday, April 4, 2007

Police killed man as he tried to kill self.A federal lawsuit accuses two Allentown police officers of ''outlandish and outrageous conduct'' in what it calls the unprovoked shooting of a man who tried to kill himself with a box cutter.

James H. Stewart, 24, died from two gunshots to his back after the officers tried to arrest him for failing to return to Northampton County Prison after a work-release assignment. He had been jailed for failing to make child support payments.The suit, filed by attorney John P. Karoly Jr. on March 19, exactly two years after Stewart's death, alleges officer Jeremy Moll shot Stewart twice and that Moll's partner, Wesley Wilcox, yelled at him, ''What the f--- are you doing?''

Filed on behalf of Stewart's estate and his sister, Tonya Stewart, the suit accuses both officers of brutality and using excessive force. Besides Moll and Wilcox, it names former Chief Joseph Blackburn and the city as defendants, and seeks at least $300,000 in punitive and compensatory damages.

Allentown spokesman Joe McDermott said the city would issue no statement on the suit. ''It's litigation, so we can't comment on it,'' he said. ''Our solicitors and lawyers will look over it and proceed accordingly.''

Karoly, of South Whitehall Township, who has won multimillion-dollar settlements against Easton and Bethlehem in police brutality cases, could not be reached for comment.

Stewart, a handyman and father of three, had fallen behind on child support payments and in February 2005 was sent to Northampton County Prison, where he was placed in a work-release program. But he failed to return to the prison March 4, and a warrant was issued for his arrest.

Early on March 19, 2005, police received an anonymous tip that Stewart was at his sister's home at 510 Auburn St., Allentown.

According to the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court:

Moll and Wilcox arrived minutes later and ''pushed their way'' into the home, where they found Stewart ''sitting harmlessly'' on his bed. The officers ordered him to stand, asked his name and checked his identifying tattoos. When they told Stewart to turn around, he took a box cutter from his belt and ''tried to stab himself.''

One of the officers wrestled the box cutter away and threw it to the floor.

As Stewart stood with his back to the officers and arms to his sides, Moll shot him. Stewart fell to his knees, and Moll shot him again in the back. Stewart dropped to the floor, where he lay dying in a pool of blood.

Wilcox and Moll forced Tonya Stewart to the floor, beside her brother, where she was handcuffed. The officers also handcuffed James Stewart, who was moaning and ''bleeding profusely.''

Wilcox turned to Moll, according to the suit, and said, ''My God, what did you do?''

Stewart was taken to Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest, where he died about 30 minutes later.

At the time of the incident, police said the city's communications center received a call at 2:39 a.m. from the Auburn Street home. The caller told police a wanted man was there and he might have a gun.

As two officers tried to arrest Stewart, according to the police account, he held up a box cutter and a struggle began. One of the officers fired at Stewart, hitting him twice in his upper back.

If you have been a defendant in any of our family courts since the “welfare reform” of the 1990’s, you most likely left there with an eerie feeling that the decision was made long before you walked into the courtroom. That should be of no surprise to anyone because the fact is; the decision was made long before your case was even filed.

How and why does this keep happening with such great predictability? That is because our family law operation is that way by design.

Our states’ family law statutes are not designed to dispense justice or operate in “the best interest of the child.” Nor are they the true governance over the daily operations of our courts. Rather, the states family law statutes are designed to ensure the operations of their family courts leverage the maximum return from a vast array of federal grant sources. Most of the programs providing the grant money to family law were major parts of our failed welfare reform effort of the 1990’s.

The legislatures of most of our states have abnegated their authority over the operational guidelines of their courts to committees under their Supreme Courts. These committees produce and manage the states’ courts guidelines, rules and procedures that govern the day-to-day operation of the state’s family courts and that of the court personnel and, in effect, attorneys practicing within them.

These guidelines, rules, and procedures your own attorney will claim they must work within have nothing to do with actual laws. Remember the separation of powers? That’s right. It is against the law for our courts to legislate. So the guidelines, rules and procedures that govern our courts operation aren’t laws. But don’t fool yourself; they do have the full effect and force of law.

To be certain nothing can stop this feeding frenzy off the federal teat, the states have excluded the operation of the courts from their respective Sunshine laws. So you can’t find out in advance what they are planning to do in the next revision. Therefore, you have no say in the matter except after the fact. This for all practical matters is no say at all.

This then raises the question: What was your attorney doing when he or she said you have a “winnable” case and why isn’t he or she filing civil rights violations claims when you get slaughtered? Upon interviewing several dozen family law attorneys throughout the country, my group True Equality Network came to the astounding conclusion that they do not actually practice law at all. Family law attorneys are merely “processors” within a system of very constrictive procedural guidelines.

So your defeat will be due to the practice of law without governing laws.

Then what are these elusive guidelines, rules, and procedures constructed to do? That’s simple. They are designed to make certain that rulings are made that generate the highest return from an assortment of federal “incentive programs.”

It is important to note that the states actually have no legal requirement to do what is required of most, if not all, of the federal incentive programs. Those requirements are only applicable if the state wants to apply for the federal moneys a given program provides.

When the basic concept of “if you violate someone’s civil rights so I make money, I’ll give you some of the money” is applied in the private sector we call it, payola, bribery, or maybe even racketeering, depending on the specifics of what was done and how it was done of course. However, when government violates your civil rights under the color of law it is called an incentive program.

Once the states get the money they can apply it to a host of state level programs, such as retirement funds for court workers and judges and performance incentives for court workers such as child support case administrators.

This has proven to make seeking a fair ruling or other actions within the family courts, like reasonable child support orders, much like asking the county employees involved to take a voluntary pay cut. This also keeps the attorneys inline, since they too know they would be asking the judges to take a pay cut and that won’t help them win their next case.

The failure of “welfare reform” is found in its core principle of basing the federal incentives primarily on the money the state’s collect in child support, not primarily on the percentage of cases they collect successfully.

Since the adoption of the laws collectively known as welfare reform — Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRAWORA) and its ugly step siblings, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and the Child Support Performance and Incentive Act (CSPIA) — the states have adopted a mindset of taking as much money as possible from their citizens who are almost always parents of minor children to get even more from Uncle Sam.

Since the welfare reform laws were enacted we have seen some horrifying results. Not the least of which is how child support arrearages have grown from being less than ten billion dollars nationally when welfare reform was first being debated in the US Congress in the 1990’s to approaching one hundred billion dollars today.

But worse yet, the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE) shows that currently the average income of an obligator with high child support arrearages is less than ten thousand dollars a year. So the fact is that the average “dead beat” parent meets the financial qualifications to apply for public assistance themselves. While less than 4% of all arrearages in the United States are owed by obligators earning more than twenty thousand dollars a year.

At first glance one might think the states are run by total financial idiots; they aren’t at all though. They realized early on that the federal incentives pay them for both child support moneys collected and for the enforcement effort on moneys they need to collect (arrearages). The states also know that as you go down through the income classes you will reach a point where the federal incentives for arrearage enforcement exceed the incentives they would get for collecting these cases.

Since 2000 many states have made large cuts to their child support enforcement systems, some as high as 36%. Why? Because they more than meet the federal collection requirements under CSPIA via the collection of the cases of higher wage earners through automatic wage attachments.

Spending money for efforts to collect lower income cases costs more money then they can recover from incentives. So why should they bother? As with so many of our domestic policies, CSPIA serves those that need service the least, or not at all and abandons those with the greatest real need.

So here is where the states’ court committees on rules and procedures come in. Among the battery of “laws” they create, child support guidelines are their big cash cow. Also, beyond its own funding, domestic violence claims are proven to open the door to even more child support and many other funding sources unrelated to domestic violence.

Not only are the states paid for collecting or not collecting child support, those performance figures also play a major role in how much TANF grant money they receive. As an aside; read through TANF sometime, you may be shocked to learn that a large portion of those law’s dialog are covering when and where the states can spend their welfare incentives on highway projects.

However, it isn’t called highway funding in this case. That spending is classified within a category called “improving access to facilities,” which is a perfectly legal and legitimate application of TANF incentives. This spending is then applied toward the state’s percentage of welfare incentives spent on “assistance related programs.”

The important point here is that if the state needs more highway funding, all they need to do is raise the state’s level of child support and they can spend their resulting welfare incentive increases on highway projects and remain in perfect compliance with the relevant programs funding requirements.

In view of the fact that the states child support and welfare incentives are largely based on the child support money on their books, they need to figure out how to get the most money per case out of people. A quick overview of the construct of child support guidelines shows us that in every state child support awards are predominately based on three considerations:

Income of both parents - and the difference between them Child care costs of both parents - and the difference between them The amount of time each parent has the child - or the difference between them The parents’ income is not something the state can control (or legally change), neither are the care costs the parents have, they are pretty much what they are. So the only thing the state can control and manipulate is the time the parents have with the child. We call this “custody and visitation.”

If you poke around the web you can find online child support calculators for every state. If you get bored one day, play around with some example cases for yourself. What you will find is that the time the parents have with the child has the single greatest impact on a child support obligation of the three main considerations.

In many income classes the difference between 50/50 parenting time and 70/30 results in twice the child support awarded to the custodial parent and can double again if the time with the children becomes around 85/15 or less for the non-custodial parent in some states. I assure you that this is no accident.

The abuses by the states of CSPIA funding are well documented. One example is the report prepared for the US Congress by True Equality Network, which you can download from their web site.

If at this point you have any doubts that family law is based on dollars and not on justice, equal protection under the law, or the best interest of the child. Ask North Dakota’s Governor, John Hoeven.

Among the usual and customary items on the ballet in 2006, North Dakota had ballet item for “Presumptive Equal Parenting.” Governor Hoeven himself spoke out against this ballet initiative. Not for the welfare or well-being of his state’s children.

Rather than defending the wellbeing of his state’s children, Governor Hoeven’s stated reason for opposing this initiative was due to the hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grant money such a law would cost his state. That, by the way is a significant portion of the states expected annual revenue and revenue that is considered greatly in the state’s budget requests.

The Governor did this even though he was informed numerous times that scientific studies clearly show children in equal parenting arrangements after a family breakup excel at almost the same levels as those in intact, healthy families with both their biological parents present.

He was also made aware that the large majority of teens in juvenile detention, who become pregnant, smoke, run away, do drugs, and other social problems are in primary custody arrangements.

Governor Hoeven was also aware that in their biennial report, “Custodial Mothers and Fathers and Their Child Support” (1999, 2001, and 2003) the US Census Bureau reports that of parents with equal parenting arrangements are far more likely to pay their child support, in full and on time without any enforcement actions then any other parenting arrangement. Where parents who have limited, disrupted, or no visitation with their children are likely not to pay a cent.

Governor Hoeven’s decision was not based on the best interest of the child or family values; it was all about the money.

All of the family law actions in your county court yield federal incentive moneys for your state, including domestic violence orders. There is no faster way to reduce the other parent’s visitation than a claim of domestic violence, plus everyone involved gets paid even more. This includes your own attorney is now handling the domestic violence case in addition to your divorce issues.

Moreover, it should be no surprise that no one will stand up against a false allegation of domestic violence, except its victim. Even when everyone knows for a fact the putative victim’s claim is completely fabricated or they openly admits to the court that it is a false claim the orders are often issued anyway. It is no wonder divorce attorneys are eager to tell their clients in divorce cases to file claims of domestic violence and include the children in the claim.

Let’s take look at some actual cases. We begin with the story of Rob Z., which is his real name. Although Rob is a Certified Master Social Worker, he found himself unemployed for over seven years. This was because Rob was the stay-at-home-dad for his son. When the his wife decided it was time for a change she filed a claim of domestic violence against Rob to help the process along.

Despite several witnesses, including neighbors and their own child testifying that the mother was violent partner of the marriage a restraining order was placed against Rob anyway. The order also granted temporary sole custody of their son to the mother and ordered Rob to pay child support.

Rob was removed from his home and was forbidden to have any contact with his son. However, after several months Rob’s wife changed her mind. She wanted a completely clean beginning, free of any prior obligations. So she called Rob and told him to come and pick his son. Rob agreed.

While en route Rob’s wife called him and asked how long it would be until he arrived. He gave her his estimated time and continued to go pick up his son. Upon arrival Rob found his son in the street with his belongings packed in plastic trash bags. As Rob loaded the belongings into the car, a Sheriff’s Deputy arrived.

Unknown to Rob, his wife have called in a violation of the restraining order after asking him how long it would be until he arrived at his former home. Rob was arrested for the restraining order violation and the boy was placed in temporary foster care. Once freed from jail, Rob was able to get his son from state custody.

Being that he was unemployed for so long Rob was having a hard time finding full time work. He had the credentials, but no current experience. Rob and his son ended up living in a tent in a North Carolina State Park for the summer. During this time Rob tried to get the child support order dropped. The courts not only refused to drop the support order, but decided to enforce the no contact with his son provision of the existing domestic violence restraining order they also refused to drop and Rob was arrested again.

Rob says, “That sure kept me from asking again.”

Events like the above went on for the balance of the two years the domestic violence restraining order remained in effect. Rob moved on trying to support himself and his son, while paying a child support order to a parent who refused to have any contact with their own child. Once the restraining order expired the courts finally dropped the child support order against Rob and granted him sole custody of his child.

Cases like this effect everyone. Take another real case, Arlene is her real name. Her son was in the process of splitting up with his wife. She took his leaving out on his entire family by naming them in her domestic violence complaint that ended any visitation for the children with their father and all of his family, including Arlene, their grandmother. The order gets renewed each year without question.

You should also be aware that just because your name appears on the court case as the plaintiff, that doesn’t mean you won’t suddenly find yourself the defacto defendant. Let’s take the case of Dave B, again his real name. His case is among those that illustrates how willing the family courts are to grant domestic violence restraining orders, regardless of what the actual facts of the case are.

Dave’s wife suffers from a serious mental illness. Although when she is on her medication all who know her will profess that she is a delight to be with and was highly regarded by friends and neighbors. However, she chooses to go off her medication regularly.

During these periods without her medication she would act-out very violently towards her husband and child. Following several involuntary committals to in patient mental health hospitals she again decided to stop taking her medications. In this, the last of such events for the family, she beat Dave and their son with a baseball bat. Most of Dave’s injuries were the result of him shielding their son from the blows directed at the child.

Dave was told to file criminal charges. Since repeated efforts to keep his wife on medication had failed, he had to think solely of protecting his son. So he did file complaints of criminal spousal abuse and child abuse on behalf of their son.

The day before the hearing Dave’s wife filed a civil complaint of domestic violence on behalf of herself and their son against Dave in family court. He was arrested entering the courthouse for the hearing for the criminal charges. Having missed the hearing the criminal charges against his wife were dropped.

Later that day Dave was in court again, this time as the defendant in a civil domestic violence case. Without going into great detail, the restraining order, sole custody of the son, and a temporary child support order were granted to the mother. However, review of the court documents showed that all of this was allegedly granted three weeks before Dave’s wife filed her complaint.

An investigation revealed that the court was so predisposed to granting domestic violence restraining orders, with custody and child support that they would preprint the court orders, leaving only the personal information of parties of the case to be added. In this case, someone neglected to dispose of the old forms and Dave’s information was added to a form over three weeks old.

The issues in Dave’s case are as yet unresolved.

One very well publicized case is Ben V’s (story on www.5thEstate.com). Ben was doing his custody exchanges in the lobby of his Pennsylvania city’s main police station to make sure nothing went wrong. After one drop off Ben’s ex-wife filed a domestic violence complaint against him. She claimed she was attacked in the lobby of the police station.

Even though the police department’s own video surveillance system clearly shows that nothing happened, while police officers were present at the reception desk where they met, the restraining order that included his son was issued against Ben anyway. Ben’s case regarding this blatant false claim being supported by the family court is still ongoing.

But not all cases end in disaster, like Bill R’s case; once again that is his real name. Bill wanted the military to be his career. Early on he married, the couple had a son and all looked wonderful. That is until his wife developed a serious substance abuse problem. An intervention hosted by family and friends resulted in Bill’s wife leaving one night without any notice to Bill or anyone he knew and not returning.

Given Bill’s entry level pay scale he was having a hard time financially. So Bill tried to go about what we all know every reasonable single parent does and filed for child support. After two years without receiving a cent he went to the court house for help enforcing the child support order.

To his absolute shock he was told right to his face that, “We don’t enforce against women.” Bill chuckled and replied, “So much for equal protection under the law.” The case worker scolded him and then informed him that if he didn’t watch his mouth she would call children’s services on him and make sure they take his son so he would have no reason to return to her office and give her anymore lip service. Bill never received so much as one cent in child support.

Despite the bad experience Bill had with the family court and having to give up his dream of military service to earn more money, he made the choice to do what was in the best interest of everyone concerned, especially his son.

Bill worked tirelessly to inspire his son to love and respect his mother. Although nearly a decade passed before Bill wife got help for her substance abuse issues, she did reestablish contact her son and today they enjoy a happy and healthy relationship. No matter what goes wrong in a family law case, that should be how it ends.

Bill’s case proves it doesn’t take government interference in your life to do what is in the best interest of a child. Maybe it does prove the absent of government interference in your life helps it happen. But unfortunately, case like those covered above are more the rule than the exception today.

To date, not one person involved in the above cases who wronged the citizens they swore to serve has been so much as reprimanded for their actions, nor have any of the false claims made to our courts been prosecuted. Charges have been filed against Ben V’s ex-wife and her attorney, the first such case I have heard of. But the hearing is still pending and an unending stream of motions to dismiss flood the court.

So if you find yourself in the defendant’s shoes in a family law court, don’t kid yourself. Look around at the people working there. Every one of them stands to make money, somehow, someway, when you lose. Notice that I didn’t say if you lose either. The moral of the story is; When you are wronged by the family courts, don’t look for redress because it doesn’t exist in the family court today. Chances are, you will just be asking for even more abuse.

So, expect your civil rights will be violated in so many ways you may begin to believe the Constitution of the United States of America is just another myth children are told, along with Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny.

Until federal child support incentive programs pay the states the same amount per successfully collected case no matter what the dollar value is this is the way it is going to be. Middle class families will be destroyed while the poor will continue to be underserved. Nothing about this sounds like a public assistance program, does it?

Currently, despite the established facts that children do better with equal access to both of their parents and the most effective, and cost effective method of child support enforcement is enforcing custody and visitation, federal incentive programs under our failed welfare reform are paying your state to limit the time children spend with one of their parents.Moreover, if you file for redress in the federal courts you are likely to be told, as so many before you have been told, that custody is exclusively a state matter and your case will be summarily dismissed.

So, defendant, now you know the truth. You lost before your case was ever filed. This is by design. And it is all about the money.=================================================

Monday, April 2, 2007

Mortgage fraud is rampant in California. California is the largest U.S. market for high-risk home loans, and now with so many subprime lenders facing bankruptcy as a result of the upheaval in that end of the mortgage market, California Attorney General Jerry Brown has opened an investigation of the subprime mortgage industry.A spokesperson for Brown wouldn’t comment on which companies may be targeted or how far the probe has progressed so far, according to Bloomberg.com. Half of the 20 biggest U.S. subprime lenders, including No. 2 New Century Financial Corp., are located in California. According to the Mortgage Bankers Association, about 13 percent of the country’s subprime loans are in California. One state lawmaker said predatory lending practices and improper disclosure of terms may violate state consumer-protection and fair-lending laws.According to the Mortgage Bankers Association, about 13 percent of the country’s subprime loans are in California. One state lawmaker said predatory lending practices and improper disclosure of terms may violate state consumer-protection and fair-lending laws.As defaults on subprime mortgages have increased — delinquencies on subprime mortgages rose to 13.3 percent in the fourth quarter 2006, the highest since Sept. 2002, according to the MBA — at lease 30 lenders have stopped operations, gone bankrupt or sought buyers since the beginning of 2006. New Century Financial has already stopped lending in Idaho, Iowa, Michigan and Wyoming, and one news source reported that more than a dozen states told the company to halt operations after consumers complained their loans weren’t funded after being approved. California previously investigated subprime lenders and was one of 49 states to share in a $325 million settlement with Irvine, Calif.-based Ameriquest Mortgage Co. last year over claims that the company cheated customers by misrepresenting loan terms and getting inflated appraisals. Ameriquest is the sixth-largest U.S. subprime mortgage company."Because of the financing that was possible, so many people bought the bigger house. People across all income brackets are having financial hardship." For those on the frontlines of the growing U.S. mortgage crisis, these are the early signs that the explosion of subprime loans made to mostly poorer borrowers is reaching higher ground. The damage is hitting homes financed through jumbo loans for more than $400,000 and so-called Alt-A loans that are a notch above subprime and a step below prime. Americans already are facing foreclosure at a record pace, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. Lenders started foreclosure actions against more than one in every 200 U.S. mortgage borrowers in the last quarter of 2006. About 2.2 million foreclosures due to bad mortgage loans may cost U.S. homeowners $164 billion, mostly from lost home equity, according to the Center for Responsible Lending, a Durham, North Carolina-based research group. In the last three months, the percentage of foreclosures for U.S. homes valued at more than $750,000 has climbed to 2.5 percent, the highest since early 2005, when RealtyTrac, a online marketplace for foreclosed properties, began tracking data. The overall rate of foreclosures also is on pace to increase by a third this year."Everyone's looking at subprime. The rock they aren't looking under are the adjustable rate mortgages and teaser rates and low money-down loans, It's going to affect prime as well." Delinquencies and defaults will rise, weighing down most of the housing market. California, with 3,384 foreclosures of higher-scale homes since December, is leading the nation, followed by Florida and New York, according to RealtyTrac. The MBA doesn't track foreclosure data by home value. Adding to the grief, mortgage scams and con artists trying to take advantage of distressed homeowners abound, boosting foreclosure rates, county workers said. "It's not the American Dream anymore," said Fran Napolitano, a county clerk in Hackensack. "It's 'who can I stab next."' It's sad. It's just an awful feeling," she said. "You hope that you can come up with a financial plan to help people remain in their homes, but sometimes it's not the best thing for them." "If they can't afford it, sometimes the best thing for them is to walk away."

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Wednesday uncertainties surrounding the U.S. economic outlook had increased recently, and that future interest-rate decisions by the Fed would depend on how the economy evolves. "The near-term prospects for the housing market remain uncertain," he said, adding that developments in the subprime mortgage market, which caters to borrowers with weak credit histories, had raised additional questions about the housing sector.Bernanke said the central bank believed the economy was still likely to expand at a moderate pace over coming quarters. But he said: "This forecast is subject to a number of risks. To the downside, the correction in the housing market could turn out to be more severe than we currently expect, perhaps exacerbated by problems in the subprime sector."

Sunday, April 1, 2007

Thirteen year old Ashley Flores has been missing since about January 13, 2007. Her parents manage a deli market in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The name of the market is Acme Markets. If anyone any where knows anything, please contact the family at: HelpfindAshleyFlores@yahoocom

About Me

I am a thoroughly civilized, humane, cosmopolitan, polished, restrained, enjoyable, entertaining Info-maniac. I am a staunch exponent of individual dignity, freedom, equal access to legal services, and equal protection of the law. Here I hope to demonstrate my emotional restraint, humbleness of sentiment, psychological subtlety, lucid style, and simple language, without evading political reality or eternal truth. Daily I am excited that I have the right to create the beginning of a new self and to challenge old habits and attitudes I no longer choose to accept. I choose to relax in the present with my direction firmly in mind. I have an enormous capacity for creative and clever ideas and thoughts. It is phenomenal what I can do. I am capable of so much learning and absorbing a lot of information. My potential is a source of pleasant surprise for me.
Each day, I increase in knowledge, skills, strength, faith, and abilities.With each adventure, the boundary hemming in my potential expands easily to accomodate my growth and achievements.